A Question for President Asquino: Do You Think We’re Second-Rate?

I was asked by the chief editor to write up an editorial in response to the Mount Wachusett Community College President's decline for questioning due to "lack of time." It seemed to me that I was the only one who dared to publicly challenge the president's actions and decision-making. Several others within the staff expressed fear of possible reprocussions. It was given front-page staus in the May 2007 issue of the Mount Observer.

Mr. president,

Perhaps you may remember an email we have sent you, addressed from the Mount Observer and dated Tuesday, April 17, twenty minutes past noon. To refresh your memory, we’re referring to the one in which you replied less than an hour later.

It was only one day after Cho Sueng-Hui gunned down thirty-two students and faculty, then himself, within the Virginia Tech campus and we felt it was necessary to address concerns of safety measures or emergency procedures that have either been established to at least discussed for our college, within her own newspaper.

Out of respect, Mr. President, we had sent you five questions concerning what our student body should know or how they should proceed if a similar tragic incident were to ever occur here, following with four personal questions asking for your professional opinion and intimate feelings on this matter. If you remember, Mr. President, your reply was simply a courteous “Thank you,” then requested we discuss this with Chief Kolimaga.

We understand that a man of your position is frequently busy with important and time-sensitive affairs, as we had acknowledged this within our email’s conclusive paragraph, so we remained sympathetic, however disappointed, up until three days later when we had stumbled upon an surprising article laid out upon the front page of the April 19 issue of the Gardner News.

The topic of this surprising, front-page article was very familiar to the one we, here at the Mount Observer, desired to cover for our May issue. What made it even more surprising is that it consisted primarily of comments and opinions from you, Mr. President: exactly five quotes and paraphrases each.

As active reporters ourselves, we understand that in order to obtain ten paragraphs of reported material from one source requires a substantially lengthy interview, one that would require much more time than we had previously assumed you couldn’t spare.

Need I remind you, Mr. President, that we are the printed voice of our college’s student body, consisting of articles covered by said student body, concerning issues that directly affect the student body, like the one that addressed our safety if ever confronted by one disgruntled and armed to the teeth.

Somehow, an outside newspaper, whose name we need not to mention again, received cooperation from our own president yet no similar article will appear in this issue due to lack of compliance from reliable sources… with only an editorial to take its place.

We believe it is fair to say that we have cooperated with faculty and administrators in the past when it came to press releases, but as students who desire the experience and especially eventual careers in journalism, we require a little more than secretarial work. We have ideas of our own to publish in the Mount Observer and really need the cooperation of all who roam within the limits of our beloved campus; it’s all we have in comparison to other newspapers whose reporting privileges expand an entire multi-town district.

Sincerely,
The Editors of the Mount Observer